"The Pledge" (2001) - Movie Review

Sean Penn’s “The Pledge” is an exemplary film making which shows how much of an artist he is in mastering the tone of melancholy and has become best in “Into the Wild”. The film is an adaptation from the novel of same name by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. The lone warrior out here is Detective Jerry Black. In the first shots, he is clearly disoriented and speaks to himself. His dress has traces of falling down which we think is a small slip but his face with small wounds tells otherwise. He is a distressed man. The sun is high and Penn interlaces the shots of flying of birds into him. He is high in the clouds of losing himself. What had become of him?

Jerry Black witnesses his final terror in the job when he is six hours away from retirement. The crime is brutal and merciless. A young and innocent little girl is raped and murdered. He walks out from his own party and conveys the bad news to the parents, Margaret (Patricia Clarkson) and Duane Larsen (Michael O’Keefe). Margaret asks Jerry to promise her on catching the killer. He promises and she pushes to promise on his soul salvation. He does. And he loses it in the remaining part of the film.

Penn on his eye for the nature’s beauty invites it to the screen. Nicholson as the once glorious cop knows the time has come to see the door. He is appalled by the method of interrogation his fellow detective Stan (Aaron Eckhart) does to get the confession out of a Native American, Toby Wadenah (Benicio Del Toro). Every one is happy to have got the killer and too happy that he shoots himself later. Something bothers Black, weird feeling once in a while we would get when things does not seem right for no apparent reason. It is not a hunch for Black but a shoddy combination of getting out of the game and mainly his last days of peace. There is no shed of doubt he does it for the righteousness. Yet the selfishness in it is visible. To catch a merciless killer, personal hunger and opinion becomes more of a driving factor. And in Jerry it is a lot.

His queries of similar killings in the past decade reveal a pattern and a drawing of his victim tells a lot more. A tall giant man handing small porcupines to a little girl and he has a station wagon. With this he moves in to a nearby town. He buys a gas station. He does not lose his life rather he advances it. He meets up a single mom Lori (Robin Wright Penn) and her eight year old daughter Chrissy (Pauline Roberts). He is off to a great family life he never had. But he hears the words he wants to and sees the things he wants to which becomes an obsession. Penn does not overstate things out here but uses a cautious emotion. It is not blatant. Jerry a man fond of fishing subconsciously prepares bait for catching the killer. Yet it is not the sole purpose. He genuinely loves the kid and her mother.

“The Pledge” is an exercise over the inevitable insanity Jerry Black is going to. Not that he is wrong but his mind has exhausted in calming down and drenched down in the fear of a killer being free. This performance of Nicholson is sandwiched between his intolerable prick in “As Good as It Gets” and another retiree from a clockwork career in “About Schmidt”. Nicholson’s Black has the tiredness and feeling of being useless. Still he is driven by the voices from his last day at work. He has the maturity of accepting his cop days being over but at the same time the urge of being a cop for thirty years works him up.

People like Jerry Black who has the good intention get misread easily. And in the verge of the communication fallout they build up their trust in their head with themselves. These are the times doubting one digs out better things. Black loses that over being obsessive and forgets the original motto he started hunting for the killer. Talking so much about his quest for killer does not mean that the film is an exercise of nurturing the madness in him. Penn as he does “Into the Wild” depends more on the images than the dialogues. More on expressions than words. More on nature’s beauty than on the thrills. And completely sweeps us off in the implementation of using music as a substantial tool for his imagination. This is the film when at the end of it you come to know exactly how the director wanted the film to be and how immaculately he brings it to the screen.